Needle roller bearings: 60 years and still evolving
Whilst the basic design of a needle roller bearing hasn’t changed a great deal in the last 60 years, continuous developments have resulted in new cage designs that provide five times the service life and double the static load rating of their original counterparts.
Most design engineers will already be familiar with the technical advantages provided by a needle roller bearing – the ability to handle relatively high loads in a compact design envelope. This technical advantage has made the needle roller bearing the preferred choice of bearing in a wide variety of industrial and automotive power transmission applications over the years.
A needle roller bearing is a bearing that uses small cylindrical rollers. These rollers are used to reduce friction of a rotating surface. Compared to ball bearings, needle roller bearings have a large surface area that is in contact with the bearing raceway journals.
The typical structure of a needle roller bearing comprises an inner race (or sometimes just a shaft), a needle cage which orients and contains the needle rollers, the needle rollers themselves, and an outer raceway. There are many different designs of needle roller bearing, including drawn cup, precision race, caged roller, and thrust roller. Here, we consider the caged roller type.
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